


Silhouette

by merixyka



Category: None - Fandom
Genre: Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 05:08:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 11,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19166440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merixyka/pseuds/merixyka
Summary: A boy named Andrew has graphomania, which makes him write violent murder scenes unconsciously. And he never dares read what he writes. And a maniac, calling himself the silhouete of Andrew, makes everything he writes happen.





	1. Andrew: Graphomania

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry for what is about to happen in the following chapters.

Blood, sweat and tears. These are what occur when I find myself writing unconsciously. I hate it, yet it happens almost every night. It sometimes happens during day, too, when I’m too stressed to be awake and to sleep. I don’t like what I write, either. I think they’re full of terror. And, to tell the truth, they indeed are. They’re the most savage, brutal and sadistic things to be done to people. You may be asking “Then why would you write them?” The answer, obviously, will be hidden in these pages I am writing now.  
I really am sorry for what is about to happen in the following pages.  
It’s kind of a night that stars are invisible. I’m in my room and out of control. The pen that I’m holding is making words exist. It’s my handwriting, but am I the one who writes?  
I wipe my sweat with my arm. I stop yet don’t drop the pen. I look at what I’ve done, what I’ve written. I’m irritated by my own mind. My eyes are now on my pen. I think of doing something... something to punish myself.  
I look at my pen and wonder if it’s sharp enough. “Sharp enough to what?” I ask myself. Do I intend to stab myself? Kill myself? But, to me, death isn’t a punishment. To punish me, one should do something more painful. Something to make me remember it. Then I think of an old friend of mine. She used to say to me that my hands were beautiful. She thought they looked like the run of a river which separates in more channels when my veins got more visible than usual. Thinking of this, I look at my hand. Would it be hurtful enough? Would it leave a scar? “No,” I say to myself. “I shouldn’t think these. I’m over that shit! I’m better... better than this.”  
Even I don’t believe what I say. I know I’m not over that shit. I’ve never been, probably never ever will be. Thinking what to do, I remember the eyes of an old friend of mine. Those deep blue eyes which look like an ocean that one can easily drown in. I close my own eyes and then take a deep breath. I see them ocean eyes. I don’t exhale. I wait. And I wait.  
There are no blue eyes now. They’re gone and have left their place to the pure darkness of a graphomaniac young’s mind. “This never happened before,” I think. “Getting out of control twice at one night?” I exhale. “Fuck.”  
I open a new page on my notebook. I start to write but, once again, I am not the one who writes. My sweat drops down to the page. My illness doesn’t care. It continues. I write and write. There’s a single drop of tear in my right eye. Once I blink, the tear draws its way down to my cheeks and chin. I try to breathe in, but my body doesn’t allow me to. Then I want to breathe out, but I can’t, either. I’m choking. My body’s choking me.  
I seek for a way to stop myself but I’m not even my own now. I keep writing for half an hour without stopping and my hand starts to hurt so much that I cry even louder. I shout at the page I’m looking at, yet, unfortunately, I don’t stop. I’m so tired that I feel like I’ve been running for hours. I close my eyes with the hope of losing my consciousness and faint, therefore dropping the pen. But what I hope isn’t important anymore. It’s my graphomania what matters.  
I’m lost in my pages, which means I’m lost in my mind. I wish I knew it like I own it, but I sometimes ask myself the question whether I own it or not. It hurts, it really does. I stop thinking about my pathetic situation because I hate to feel like I’m making people pity me. I open my eyes and realize I’m in a dream... or a nightmare, perhaps.  
I don’t mean what I’ve been doing and feeling was a dream. They were real but the fact that I hoped to lose my consciousness and faint seems to be happening.  
In my dream I’m in my room but it’s darker than before. I look at the walls and there happen to be lines of blood. I get closer to a wall and put my finger to the end of a red line. Blood doesn’t stop or keep flowing under my finger but creates a way on it. I try to get it back but it’s stuck there. Blood covers my hand and slowly turns my arm, shoulders, chest, waist and finally my legs and feet red. I can’t move. I’m reddened. I can taste it, the blood.  
I manage to open my mouth and I feel dozens of bugs entering. I can’t cough to get rid of them so they keep going deeper in my throat. I feel them in my stomach, they’re biting it. They’re consuming me from the inside and I’m about to be a complete food to bugs. When they’re done with my stomach, I separate in two pieces. My waist and legs fall, my chest and head stand still as my finger is still stuck on the wall. However, I can see the blood of mine squirt everywhere, causing the blood-lined walls to be covered in more blood.  
Then there I see a familiar face on the wall that I’m looking at, since I can’t move yet. The face is made of wall and red lines of blood are flowing down from its eyes to cheeks, looking like its tears. I don’t know where I know this face from but I do know I know who it is, who he is. He looks directly in my eyes and opens his mouth made of wall. He simply says two words. Two words that turn this horrible nightmare even more terrifying: “Your fault.”  
Suddenly the frozen blood covering my body shatters and I’m free. Then I realize I’m separated. I become able to feel the pain of being cut in two and I use my arms to move away from the face on the wall. I’m crawling. I still don’t know why I think he’s someone I know but I’m aware of the fact that what he called fault is something I’m running away from. And this means he’s right about it being my fault. The face must belong to someone I hurt before.  
I find my way out of the room and I feel my legs once again. I look at the back of me and see myself full. I stand up and start to run but I don’t know where to. I hear a million bugs running after me. I somehow know they still want to consume me. I’m the victim in my own dream.  
When I think about being the victim, the same face appears on the wall next to me but it’s moving as I do and says “Don’t play the victim, Andy!” I feel like I’m shot in the head when I hear this name. There has been only one person who’d call me this abbreviation of my name and he died in a car crash. I wonder if he thinks I’m responsible for his death. But... it was a car crash. How can I be responsible for that?  
The face disintegrates. The bugs’ sound disappears. I’m all alone in a corridor full of mystery and blood. I look at my hands and some kind of scar appears. I close my eyes and scream because of the pain but when I dare look at them again, I see the scar is a sentence written on my hand. My right hand says “Madness is endless,” and left says “But you’re not.”  
I wake up with tears in my eyes. I suspiciously look at my hands and am delighted because there are no words written, although I can still sense the pain.  
My delightfulness doesn’t last for long as I look at the notebook before me. I turn the pages and see I’ve written thirty pages of terror. I don’t dare read it, though a part of me wants to. Somehow, I glance at the last sentence of this new bloodshed: I wrote “My madness is endless but I’m not.” This gives me chills and I lose that weak urge to read the whole thing at once.  
I throw my notebook away and close my eyes with my hands. I can feel the tears in my eyes ready to fall down on my cheek. I keep myself as possible as I can so that I wouldn’t get lost, again, in my mind.  
I hear someone falls to the floor and wonder who that might me in the middle of the night but as I share the house with only one person it’s quite obvious who it is. I remove my hands from my eyes and scan the room for five or ten seconds to be aware of where he’s standing. For a second, I feel like I’ve fallen asleep again. Then I open my eyes and find him next to the gray sofa which he’s owned since his childhood; at least that’s what he says when I ask him to make money by selling it.  
He looks at me curiously and asks what he always asks after a crisis of mine: “Can I read this time?”  
I take the notebook back and throw my deadly looks to him. “Not until I die.” I joke and laugh. It’s good to have someone with whom you laugh together when something bad or sad happens.  
“I don’t want to wait for fifty years,” he complains.  
“Fifty years?” I ask. “I’m already nineteen... make it thirty years.”  
“Do you have plans on building a life in thirty years, sir?”  
“No,” I answer. “But I’m not planning to live after my sixties.”  
We laugh hard and my tears of sadness turn into tears of joy.  
I wish this night could continue this way with him but it always ends in a bad way. For this time, it’s worse. We hear a gunshot near the house and look each other with fear in our eyes. Our laughter slowly disappears and gives its place to stone-cold faces. He hurriedly gets up and finds himself on the window, looking around. I dare get up and look out from another window and it appears that mine has a better view.  
I see a man running from a hound and I recognize the hound as our neighbor owns it. “Did you see that?” I ask. “It was Mrs. Shades’ hound.”  
“Why isn’t it at home?” he asks back while he’s coming to my window.  
Suddenly another gunshot is heard. This time, it’s obvious where it was shot. I wonder who shot whom. Then, five seconds after the gunshot, my roommate has a hole in his head and he’s down.


	2. Rick: Extrajudicial Execution

I wish there were stars. The sky seems so dark and it bores me. I put a cigarette between my lips and flick the lighter; the ongoing trial of killing myself. I breathe in the smoke and feel it down in my lungs. I don’t want to let go. I want the smoke to stay in there and I want to keep feeling this same old bittersweet pain forever. But it also bores me to feel it for more than five seconds. I breathe out to take another breath of the cigarette.  
I am neither of the people you’ve already met. I am so much more and I am so much less. I am an enthusiast and I am an unwillingness of my own desires. I used to be a husband, a father, and sane. Now I’m lost because I have lost my wife, my son and my mind. I am a dedicated man, a policeman, head of the police department. To what exactly I am dedicated? To find criminals, I’m not like that anymore. What I want to do is captivate the killer of my family. People keep telling me they died in a car crash but I have seen the crime scene and I never fail to see when a crime is done. It wasn’t just a car crash. It was a planned murder.  
You must be thinking I am an insane policeman. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am insane and making up excuses for the car crash and not acknowledging the fact that it was just it. But maybe, just maybe, I am not. There’s a possibility of everything and a decent policeman should consider all possibilities. That’s what I’m doing. That’s what I want to be.  
Whatever, whatever...  
The city’s sleeping. A few bats are flying from one place to another as if they don’t belong to anywhere. The flutter of their wings is the only thing I hear in the silence of the night. Buildings’ lights are all out but there are white lights to enlighten their walls. It’s kind of fascinating but to stay in the darkness of my balcony is better. My wife forbade me to smoke inside, which became a habit of mine to smoke on the balcony. She may be gone but my promises to her are valid.  
After smoking the last cigarette I have, I decide to get in and prepare the bed. I don’t want to sleep, of course, for I fear I may have a nightmare like I did yesterday... and the day before that... and the day before that... and this goes forever. Our bedsheet used to be purple as it was her favorite color. Oh you should’ve seen the rooms we had... Everything was colored with every shade of purple. I once asked her to color me purple too and she said I was too black to be colored. She didn’t know that hurt me because I never showed her my bad and sad sides. I sometimes wish I’d had as I can never now.  
I get in the bed that is no longer purple but dark blue. I wish to sleep without lying down for hours and doing nothing. But my wishes are just as resistant as ashes. I hopelessly start watching the ceiling, which also makes me remember one final memory: The day that I tried to end it all.  
I remember looking at this ceiling before mounting a hook that I could tie a rope. I also remember wearing the rope as a necklace. And I remember so well pushing the chair beneath me so I could hang from the ceiling. The only thing that I don’t remember is how I survived. Did the rope separate in two? Did somebody find me and saved me? If so, why would they leave me lying on the ground and get out of there without doing or saying anything? I’ve been feeling like my story isn’t done since then; there’s an empty hole I should fill.  
I can see you think that there’s a lot going on in my mind. Old Rick thinking about everything...  
I decide to turn around on the bed and start looking out of the window. What I see when I do so makes me rub my eyes because I see a hooded person climbing to a building via the pipes. The distance between my building and it is long so there’s no way I can yell at him to stop and get his ass back on the ground. I’m hoping he owns where he’s trying to enter but he lost his keys or whatever. Or it’s just another side-effect of the whiskey that I drank all day. Hallucination.  
I don’t mind and focus on the sleeping part because I will be awake in three hours to go to work. My eyes are slowly closing. I hope to not find myself in the middle of a nightmare.  
I do find myself in the middle of a nightmare.  
There’s another hooded man like the one I just saw climbing. He carries a gun this time and the building he’s breaking into isn’t his. Five people living in there are somehow not aware of him being among them. He’s looking into each of their eyes one by one but no one sees him like he’s a ghost or something. What bothers me is that I can see him and know that he’s up to no good. I can also feel the tear in my eye ready to flow down. I’m shouting to let them know they’re going to die but they don’t seem to hear me, either. I feel like their grim reaper.  
The hooded man whose face I still cannot see raises his gun, aims someone’s head and pulls the trigger in the twinkle of an eye. When the person that’s shot is on the ground, he slowly gets up and starts to laugh like death is what he has been seeking all along. Then I realize his body is still on the ground but something exactly looking like him is slapping him in the face again and again. He carries the dead body and throws it into the fireplace, which causes him to burn as it does, too. The fact that he still keeps laughing is disturbing.  
There are four people and the hooded man in the room now. Hooded raises another gun, he has double guns. He aims two girls’ heads and pulls the triggers once again. Girls are on the ground but suddenly they’re being pulled by their hair then dragged along all the way to the fireplace. Their bodies start turning to ashes, too.  
There are now two people and the hooded. It doesn’t take me long to realize that the two remaining people have sacks on their heads, faces aren’t seen. Hooded man looks directly in my eyes. He opens his mouth and words of cruelty are spoken: “You did this.” I feel like there’s a bullet in my head. I recognize his voice. If he’s the one who I think he is... Oh my god...  
He removes the sacks. The two remaining people are my wife and me. I don’t know what to do or say. He keeps looking into my eyes, I can’t see his face but I can sense it. He finally removes his hood, too. He’s exactly who I think he is. I start to cry. “Son...”  
“Don’t call me son,” he cuts me. “You lost me on that day you left me alone in the dark.”  
“I never left you,” I try to say but my voice isn’t heard.  
“When I died, you left me in that dark coffin and never visited me, you selfish piece of crap!”  
He had a point. I never had the courage to visit their graves. I was too coward to see them dead, too coward to read their names on the gravestone. “Alec... Forgive me,” I do nothing but beg.  
“It’s not me who should forgive you, oldie.” He says and raises his gun to me. “Find Andy.” He pulls the trigger and I’m awake. There are tears in my eyes and I’m sweating. I can still hear the gunshot repeating in my head... Until I hear an actual gunshot.  
I run to the balcony and scan the streets but there’s no one. Then I look at the building that I saw someone climbing before I slept. Its window has a hole. A bullet hole.  
My phone rings. I hurriedly answer it. It’s from work. “I guess you heard it too, sir?”  
“Is it near my house?” I ask.  
“A boy called the police, he was crying. He said they heard a gunshot and look out through the window. Then they heard the second one and his friend was lying on the ground with a hole in his head; bleeding, dead.”  
“It’s an extrajudicial execution.”  
“Indeed, sir.”  
“Send a team, I’m on my way.”  
My deputy said there was two gunshots but I heard only one, which means the first one was what I heard in my dream... what I heard when my son shot me. But most importantly... He told me to find Andy. Who the fuck is Andy?


	3. Andrew: Nightmares in Narrow Streets

I scream and have my head down because I fear who shot him may want me dead, too. I’m crying while looking at his body lying on the floor, bleeding. I put my hand on his chest and stay silent and stabile to know if his heart still beats. I wait for five seconds and it’s the longest five seconds of my whole life. It doesn’t beat. He doesn’t breathe.  
I don’t know what to do. We were laughing ten minutes ago and now he’s dead on the floor with a hole on his forehead. I’m crying. I’m shouting, begging to see him take his deepest breath and cough for a couple times and look at me, say “What the actual fuck just happened?” or something. It doesn’t happen and I’m crying louder than ever before.  
When I don’t hear any sound outside, I get up and find my phone to call the police. It rings. Seconds past and I’m about to lose it. Someone answers. “Police Department, how can I help?”  
I don’t even know what to tell them. I stutter for a while and the woman behind the phone wants me to keep calm and speak slowly. I take a breath. “My friend has been shot.” She asks me if he’s okay and if we’ve done the first aid. “He was shot in the head,” I answer. “He doesn’t breathe. Please send help.” I cry and my sight is blackened. There’s a vertigo that collapses my mind. All I can sense is catastrophe.  
I find myself on the floor, lying right beside him. Before I guiltily faint, he’s what I’m looking at. Dearest of all my friends is gone away to find a light to carry him to heavens, leaving me behind in the dark. I try to reach his hand to let him know he’s not alone. I lose my strength to raise my hand, which is an obstacle for me to reach him, touch him. I’m passing, abstracted from reality. I wonder if he’s alone now, without me holding his hand.  
I couldn’t even say goodbye. He’s the second person to die without me making my farewell. I look at my hand that I just tried to touch him with and think of that friend of mine again. The girl who loved my hands, who thought they were beautiful. Then I find out the reason why I had another graphomania crisis tonight. Even though I didn’t recall this when I thought of her, I now do: She had a heart attack a year ago, months after our friendship was over.  
Remembering her and looking at him gives me a pain so familiar and close to the heart. I pass out.  
I’m having nightmares in narrow streets. There’s a car on fire but inside of it can be seen and I see two people in the front seats. The one sitting on the driver’s seat is a blunt haired woman and the other one seems to be a boy around my age. Looking at them, I’m hit by a bough of a tree that must have been ripped off by the heavy storm, which suddenly awakes me.  
There I see him right before me, still on the cold ground covered in blood. While I was lying, the blood flew under my head and reddened it. That reminds me of my latest nightmare in which I was frozen in blood. I get up but I wash neither my hands nor my face to get rid of it. The door bells, I open it. Few cops and a man with a cigarette on his mouth are standing, ready to get in. “May I?” he asks.  
“He’s inside,” is all I can say while stuttering.  
“No, I know that.” he corrects. “May I come in with a cigarette?” He’s an Englishman.  
I don’t even care if he smokes in the house. What I care is my friend’s dead body. Instead of talking, I get out of their way. They get in.  
When the smoking man takes his first step into my house, he scans the walls. He seems to be interested in something within them. He gets closer to one and looks very carefully. “There’s our bullet hole, and probably the bullet itself.”  
I get near him. “That’s not new,” I say. “It had been there before we moved in, says the owner.”  
Smoking man looks at me, raising his left eyebrow. “Why would there be a bullet hole on your wall?”  
“He says... The former tenant shot himself in this very room.”  
He seems distracted. “I still want it checked out.” He sees the body, gets near him. “Why were you two standing before the window?” His voice is... cold. Emotionless... like he’s done his time.  
“We heard a gunshot close to us.”  
“You got curious and wanted to see if there was a killer in your neighborhood?”  
I felt guilty.  
“Were you awake at the moment?” He’s asking these questions like they don’t matter. It’s his coldness what makes me think this way.  
“He had been awake for like half an hour and I hadn’t slept since yesterday morning.”  
“Why, kid, why didn’t you sleep?”  
I don’t know why but there’s a feeling in my heart that’s telling me I should trust this person with my whole life. I feel like I can open myself to him without hesitation. But it’s too early. “I’m having nightmares.”  
He nods. “I get that.”  
A woman interrupts us. “Sir, there has been a break in. None of the shoes’ prints in the house matches the ones we found on the ground in front of this window.”  
Smoking man breathes in like he’s frustrated. “How could I forget?” I’m afraid to ask what. He looks directly in my eyes. “You wouldn’t happen to be sleeping when someone was climbing to you apartment, would you?”  
“I... I must tell I fainted a couple times... before he woke up.”  
“You fainted a couple times?”  
“Twice,”  
“Is there any specific reason that makes you faint twice in one night?” he asks.  
I lie. “No. I just... haven’t eaten properly.” I hope he buys it. “I’m studying for an exam.”  
“Student, I presume?”  
I nod.  
“Well, kid, I’m going to ask you to give me everything you know about him.” He must think I’m scared. “Did you know him?”  
“He was my best friend.” I answer. “I’m just not myself right now. I just lost him.”  
He exhales. “You’re right.” He crouches next to the body. “You be at the police department first thing in the morning.”  
I’m okay with it. That gives me enough time to think about everything happened and get over the shock. “Are you leaving the building?”  
“There’s nothing to see. It was done by a professional sniper.” He answers.  
“You’re saying you can’t find any evidence?”  
“In here, no, we can’t.” He continues. “But if we happen to find out, and trust me, we always do, from where the gun was shot we will have them in jail.”  
“You’re not... suspecting of me, are you?” I ask because I’m afraid if there’s no further evidence, all the evidence that already exist might lead to me.  
“Should we?”  
I shake my head.  
My phone rings. It’s Aaron. “The sun is rising! Today is the first day of your new life Andy.”  
“Don’t call me that, I said it a thousand times.”  
Smoking man looks at me and sees me talking on the phone. “Who’s he?”  
I press the receiver with my hand so that Aaron wouldn’t hear me. “It’s my friend.”  
“Why’s he calling you this time at night?” Instead of answering his question, I look outside and so does he. “Oh. It’s not night anymore.” He gets up. “We’ll take the body.”  
“Will I be able to see him again?”  
“You’ll come to the morgue.”  
“Okay,” I stutter.  
I go with them to the door. “Before we go, I want to introduce myself.” he says. “My name’s Rick, and this my deputy Lewis.”  
Lewis shakes my hand after handing me a piece of paper. “I found this on the ground. Didn’t read it, but it seems important.”  
I look at the paper. I know exactly where this paper is ripped off from. I unfold it. There’s a title: The Death of the Closest.  
Rick seems interested and takes the paper from me. He reads it for minutes. He looks into my eyes furiously. “This is the evidence that makes me suspect of you, Mr..?”  
“Dementis, Andrew Dementis.”  
“Your last name is Dementis?” Lewis chuckles.  
Rick looks at him angrily. “Mr. Dementis you may get arrested because of what is written in this paper.”  
“What is written there?”  
“Want to see it yourself?” He hands it to me.  
I read the whole thing at once. I read and I cry. I cry because it’s something I must have written during one of my crisis. And I realize what I wrote here happened tonight. I don’t mean I wrote my friend’s death and he died. I mean I wrote everything that happened tonight. I wrote the first gunshot we hear, looking out of the window, seeing a hound chasing a man, hearing the second one and having my friend dead on the floor with a hole on his head.  
Someone stole this page from my notebook. Someone, some lunatic, made everything that’s written here happen exactly the same. God know what else he has and what else he can do with those.  
“You’re not going to believe me.” I say.  
“Try me, Dementis.”


	4. Rick: Night Bird’s Giggle

This case is more complicated than I thought it would be. The first time I saw the body on the floor I thought it was done by a sniper and worried if we would be able to find any specific evidence at all. All we could find was some shoe prints and nothing else. When we decided to leave the house, carrying the body with a stretcher, my deputy Lewis came with a piece of paper. When Dementis read it, he cried. When I read it, I wished I wouldn’t find him guilty of taking his own friend’s life at this young. He said we wouldn’t believe. I took him to police station to give his statement about the events happened.  
“What you’re going to tell me now is not your statement, Mr. Dementis.” I say. “I just want to know what the hell that paper is.”  
He takes a breath. “Have you heard a mental disorder called graphomania?”  
I say I haven’t.  
“It’s having an urge to write in specific moments.” He explains. “When I lose my conscience I start writing some crazy stuff that I don’t want to.”  
“It happens by itself?” Lewis asks, seeming interested in the story.  
Dementis nods. “I don’t be myself when I’m writing what I write.”  
“What do you write, Dementis?” I ask and he can feel the coldness in my voice that’s telling him if I’m not satisfied with his story, I can put him in jail to rot and never look back.  
“They’re mostly about brutality.”  
“Explain brutality.” I can see the tears in his eyes but I have to push him to the edge to see if he’s lying.  
“Like, killing people in... disgusting ways.” he says.  
“Do you have an urge to kill people, Mr. Dementis?”  
“No, no I don’t!” he denies. “It’s nothing like that!”  
“Lower your voice.” I say. “This is an interrogation.”  
“You can’t be thinking I killed my friend, can you?”  
“I don’t want to, Andrew.”  
Door opens. “Sir, we’ve found where the gun was shot from.”  
“You’re free to go, Dementis.” I say and look at Lewis. “Accompany him.”  
I get out of the room and put my coat on. I look outside through the window. It’s raining and I wonder what time it is. Afterwards, I look at the cloak on the wall. It’s ten in the morning and I’m now on my way to the address they gave.  
I unfurl my umbrella, light a cigarette and take my deepest breath. This case... someone dying at young reminds me of my own loss. My son on whom my life depended until he died... His death is still a pain in my heart.  
I can’t think Dementis took his friend’s life but his story has holes to fill. If he really wrote those words on that paper and somebody actually stole it from him, wouldn’t he be aware of it? Wouldn’t he know there were missing pages in the notebook? And who exactly would be capable enough to sneak into the house of two boys just to steal a page and make it real? Who would be crazy enough to walk this kind of a path?  
I sometimes can’t believe my own thoughts. What Dementis told me can be the truth. I saw him crying and yelling. He was honest.  
I throw my cigarette away after I decide to trust him. There’s nothing I can do but to hope that he’s not lying. I’ve looked into his eyes carefully to figure out if he was but I couldn’t see anything other than guilt. Thinking about all those happened, I trust Andrew Dementis.  
The address they gave me is s skyscraper. The first thing I notice about it is that it doesn’t have a security, which makes it a perfect place for a long-distant-shooting. I enter to the building and I wasn’t welcomed. “Sir, you can’t be here as Mr. Dyehart isn’t so.”  
“I didn’t come here to see... whoever he is.” I explain. “Don’t you know about anything that’s going on in this skyscraper?”  
“I plan everything Mr. Dyehart does in a day.” the woman next to me answers.  
“I don’t care about him or your so-called plans.” I say. “This building was used by a professional sniper last night. I’m here to see the bullet hive.”  
“A sniper?” she asks. “Here?”  
“You don’t have a security?” I ask back. “You’re doomed.”  
“And who are you supposed to be?” someone else asks. “How can we trust that you’re not the sniper himself and here to take the bullet hive before the police do?”  
I, as always, have forgotten to show my badge. I show it to them. “Rick Harden, head of the police department.”  
They apologize. I like them doing so.  
Someone else appears and everyone else slowly goes away. He must be who I think he is. “Dyehart?” I ask.  
“Mr. Dyehart.” he corrects me. “Rick Harden?”  
“Senior Constable Rick Harden.” I correct him. He wears a fake smile just like I do.  
“You’re here for the bullet hive, right?”  
“Take me to it.”  
We enter an elevator. I can smell death even here in the middle of this metal box. “Have you cleansed the building entirely?” I ask.  
“Why would we do that?”  
“To not have your company’s name in such an event.” I continue.  
“We take side with the police, SC Harden.”  
I don’t want to trust him. So I don’t.  
We find ourselves on the fifth floor which doesn’t make sense because it’s not high enough for a sniper to shoot perfectly. “We here?” I ask. He nods. I scan the surface to see the hive and it doesn’t take long as it was circled around. “You have contaminated the crime scene.”  
“It wasn’t us,” he replies. “It was done by the sniper himself.”  
“Don’t be so sure it’s a ‘him’ at all.”  
“You suggest he-- I mean, it can be a female?” he asks.  
“There are possibilities, Dyehart. I’m considering them all.” I wear a medical glove to put the hive to an evidence pocket. “May I examine the floor thoroughly?” He nods and I start walking while looking everywhere: The window that the sniper took his shot from is closed. “Did you close it?” He shakes his head, which is a no. I call my deputy Lewis. “Send an evidence team. I need fingerprints to find here.” I mean to keep looking around but my eyes are still focused on the window, telling me I should be doing my work here. I look through it and try to see Andrew’s house. I can’t because the rain makes it hard to focus.  
Then there I can see a corner of a window, only a part of it was showing inside the house. As I know how the house looks like from the inside, I realize it’s Andrew’s. The second thing that tells me it’s the one is that it has a hole on it. Andrew’s friend must have stretched out his head as possible as he could, therefore been able to be seen from this window. So the sniper took his shot. A perfect shot because the window he shot cannot be seen if not looked carefully, making this floor eliminated, but not the skyscraper itself. There’s something I can’t understand, though: If he thought even the tiniest things like that, why would he make a dumbass move and leave the hive behind? On purpose it must’ve been. But why risk the shot? I can’t... figure anything out! It’s something that has never happened since my family’s car crash case.  
It bothers me. I want to get out of the building to calm, to smoke. I get in the elevator, leaving Dyehart behind without telling anything. I press the button that says zero and watch the gap between two doors disappear. Here I am, smelling the death once again.  
I get out and can hear people who made me unwelcomed earlier. I don’t look or say anything to them, either. Building’s door opens slowly while I’m walking to it, which effaces my stopping to open it myself.  
The rain has already stopped when I get here. I find my cigarette in my pocket and later feel it between my lips, light it up. The feeling when I inhale is sometimes priceless as it’s the only thing that makes me better, relaxed. However, there’s a single problem: I get bored of this feeling after a breath. Putting out a cigarette after one breath is both wasting my money and losing my chance to feel much better, more relaxed. So I keep on smoking.  
I look at the evidence pocket, specifically the bullet hive, that’s still on my hand. It must be hiding something within but I’m yet to find it out. They, evidences usually talk to me but this doesn’t say anything but smirking viciously. It feels like I’m listening to a giggle of a night bird. It irritates me not to know anything about this case. The evidences are useless. I’m clueless.  
In minutes, the cigarette becomes nothing but its butt.  
The team I required and Lewis arrive. “Fifth floor,” I say. “Dyehart will show you the window.” He nods, they move to the entrance of the building. Then I get a call. It’s Mona, from work. “Give me something useful, Mona.”  
“Gun shop break in from yesterday,”  
“Anything stolen?” I ask.  
“Not exactly... The thief actually left the money.”  
“What’s taken?”  
“A sniper rifle.”


	5. Andrew: The Million Dollar Question

So many sleepless nights are waiting for me, I feel them.  
I call Aaron to let him know I won’t be joining class today. He asks me why, I feel like choking in my own spit. “Jeremy,” I say. “He’s dead.”  
He doesn’t reply for a few seconds, then he proceeds “It’s no time for a joke, Andrew.”  
I wish, I really do, it was a joke. I tell him it isn’t. He wasn’t so close with Jeremy, just saw him a couple times but heard his name quite often. He says he’s coming to my place and I ask him not to. I don’t feel like being there. “Meet me at the garden of the faculty.” It was my quiet place of fighting myself.  
In half an hour I’m at where I told Aaron to be. This place has always been a place for me to be alone and stay away from stress and everything. The first time I came here was after my third graphomania attack. I came here to run away from it. I felt so bad for writing those things, although I was unconscious. I still do feel bad. It was three years ago and I’ve never read anything I write since then, until this morning.  
I see Aaron walking; he’s just entered through the gate to the campus. He’s wearing a dark blue shirt whose first button on top is missing. I can’t, of course, see that from this far but I’m familiar with this shirt of his as he lost the button at my home. He, wearing shorts, is telling me he’s fooled by the shining sun; I know it will rain in an hour. It never not rain after such an event: A death.  
He sits next to me on the greenest grass ever seen. He looks at my eyes curiously and I turn my eyes away, so does he. “How did it happen?” he asks. I shake my head two sides, meaning I don’t want to reply to it. “You don’t want to talk about it?”  
I look at him. Actually, I watch him: He has thick but short eyebrows that suit his kind-of-looking-sad eyes which become to be the happiest ones in the world when he smiles. His mouth is wide and teeth are like made of pearl. His beard is neither long nor short compared to mine at this very moment. It reminds me I’ve forgotten to shave today.  
I answer his question: “All I want is to run away.”  
“You can’t run away from everything.”  
“Watch me when I’ve done.”  
“You can’t run away from me.”  
The warmth given to my heart lasts for a few seconds. He always knows how to make me feel better when I’m fucked up. When he looks another way, I watch him for like ten seconds until he realizes it. When our eyes meet, I hurriedly look at something else. I’m not seeing him but I know he’s smiling at me. Warmth in my chest feels even better. It’s something I haven’t felt for ages.  
He searches for something in his pocket and then I see a cigarette. He puts his between his lips and lights it up. I haven’t seen him smoking since last year. He looks at me, asks if I want one. “I’ve never smoked before,” I say. “But I feel like I need one right now.”  
“You can smoke one of mine, you know.”  
“I thought you’ve done smoking?” I ask.  
“I have,” he replies. “But I needed today.”  
There’s a storm of questions in my mind. Should I try one? Would it make a difference?  
“I’ll skip for today,” I answer his question. “I don’t want to waste my money on that.”  
“We’re always together,” he continues. “I can buy and you can use mine.”  
I never thought of living for ages. Giving something the pleasure of killing me makes sense. I accept his offer and put one between my lips, too. He holds the lighter and I watch him press the button to light my cigarette up. “I don’t know how to,” I say.  
He smiles. He’s beautiful. “You take a breath of it and when you get it out of your mouth, inhale again and let the smoke in your mouth reach your lungs.”  
I do as he says. I didn’t think it would be that hurtful, so I cough a couple times. “You didn’t mention this,” I laugh.  
“You’ll get used to it.”  
I really do feel better but I don’t know if it’s the effect of the cigarette or him. Thinking about all that happened, feeling lost and in danger are all gone for a moment when I’m with him.  
“You’re not alone,” he says like he’s read my mind.  
I look at him and confirm by nodding. “Still, there’s a bad feeling,” I answer.  
“You can always talk to me, Andy.”  
“Please don’t call me by that name,”  
“You always say this but never the reason why.” he replies.  
I get lost in my memories. An old friend of mine used to call me that name but I’m not sure if should explain this to Aaron. I simply shake my head.  
“See?” he says. “You still don’t say anything.”  
“What do you want me to say?” I take a breath of my cigarette, this time I don’t cough.  
“We’ve been friends for three years, since we started college,” he continues. “And I don’t know anything about you except your condition.”  
“My condition?” I ask.  
“Your urge to write.” he answers.  
“My illness.” I correct him.  
“Don’t say that,” he pities me.  
“I just don’t like talking about myself.” I explain.  
“I don’t want you to see me as an ordinary friend.”  
I hurriedly look at his eyes. “You’re not, Aaron.” I say. “You’re neither ordinary nor just a friend.”  
“Then what am I to you?”  
I refuse to answer.  
“Whatever,” he says. “You still don’t want to talk about what happened?”  
I don’t. But I will.  
“He got shot in front of me.” I say. “We heard a gunshot, took a look through the window. Then we heard another one. I wondered who was shooting whom.” I smoke. “I saw him have a hole on his forehead, fall down on the ground.”  
He’s looking at me. “There’s nothing you could’ve done.”  
“That’s what makes me feel even more useless.”  
“You’re not useless.”  
“What do you know about me?” I ask furiously.  
He stays silent for a second. I know I’ve hurt him with my choice of words and the volume of my voice. “That you need love.”  
I laugh. “The last time I loved someone, she died of a heart attack.”  
He looks another way. I can see he’s sad. I ask him what happened. “Nothing,” he replies. “What else is there you want to tell me?”  
“I know why the killer did it,” I say. He asks me why. “He stole something I wrote during my crisis. I didn’t even know I wrote it until the police found it at my home.”  
“What was written?”  
“Jeremy’s death.” I answer. “The killer made real every single detail I wrote.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“The first gunshot, us looking through the window, seeing a hound chasing a man,” I say. “The second gunshot and him falling down and everything,” I smoke.  
“Why would someone do it?” he asks.  
“It’s the million dollar question I keep asking myself.”


	6. Aaron: Broken Wall of Imprisoning

What a fucked-up day I’ve been having.  
I heard that my closest one’s closest friend got shot and killed.  
I am Aaron. I am angry. And I am good at taking a fight and throwing the first punch.  
Leaving Andrew alone as he wanted me to, I go back to home to be angry in my loneliness. Home is my silent place where I get lost in myself, just like the secret garden in the campus is Andrew’s.  
Before anything else, I should start with how I first met him and fell for him: It was the very first day of college and I was supposed to be in the German class, which I quite hated. I was lost in the faculty. There were so many classes and the class number I should have been in was wrong in the syllabus. I was lost. Then I saw him. I asked him where the class was and he said he got lost, too. What did we do? We skipped the class. I still don’t know where it is. I just see Andrew and go wherever he goes.  
I follow him with all my heart.  
I’m into him with all my mind.  
I’m with him with my body and soul.  
Andrew neither is the type to neither pity himself nor let anyone pity him. He lives in his aloneness. All he loves, he loves alone. I, on the other hand, am the type to let people pity me, if it is pitiful to be open to people. I never hesitate to say that I what I want to say and believe me I even got beaten for that.  
And once again, before going back to the story, let me remind you that everyone in this story has their own personality. Andrew is as dark as the latest hour of the night. Rick is as dedicated as an obsessive. And I, Aaron, am the one who breaks the forth-wall.  
Let me carry on.  
My silent place is more silent than it ever has been. To think that I’m safe here is foolish, yet I insistently continue to be a fool. My home is some place of desolation in which I am free to be me, which I don’t get to do outside. I get in and encounter with my housemate with whom I get on very well. He asks my how my day has been going. “You don’t ask and I don’t answer, would it be okay?” I reply to him.  
“Is it that bad?” he continues to ask. “What could have happened?”  
“Jeremy’s dead.”  
He drops his kind smile and replaces it with purely shocked paleness. “What do you mean ‘dead’?”  
“I mean ‘dead’.” I say. “He’s been shot.”  
“Who shot him? I mean how?”  
“I don’t know, Noah.” I answer tiredly. “Leave me alone for a second, would you?”  
“I’m here if you need anything, okay?”  
I nod.  
He knew Jeremy not more than I did. He must’ve just met him once or twice in the campus. But he always heard his name from either me or Andrew. Still, no one can feel what Andy feels. If I could, I would be uttering it to you gladly.  
My bed was still messy. I woke up this morning to a beautiful day; the sun was shining brightly, blinding my eyes but I didn’t complain. The wind was blowing fiercely but it didn’t bother me to feel the wind as it kindly blocked the heavy heat of the sun. And I always thought the wind was the echo of the wings of angels above the heavens. It rarely matters for me to question whether I have faith in such stuff or not, it just feels good to think about the seraphs.  
The messiness of my bed doesn’t bother me. I take off whatever the hell I’m wearing and let myself fall to the sweet and smooth bed of mine. Being half-naked on the bed has always relaxed me. Feeling the mellowness of the bed’s fabric is soothing.  
I’m tired but refusing to sleep. To sleep is to miss the day and the beauty of it, I often believe. But in a day like today, I deny thinking it’s beautiful. I shall let myself fall into dreams. And my dreams shall turn into nightmares. The nightmares I have are far more terrifying than those of Andrew’s.  
It is my home but more wrecked than usual. It is more likely to be sunk into the deepest of the sea, because I can’t breathe. However, what I feel when I try to inhale isn’t liquid; it feels like breathing in the flames.  
I’m suffocating.  
And I’m almost pleased with it.  
I hear a loud scream from far. I turn my head and seek for the voice but I see nothing. Yet I feel something; something running to me, or something already right behind me. I can nearly sense its breath on my neck. I dare to turn away my head and see nothing, nothing but a shadow. A shadow that belongs to whom is unknown.  
And I’m neither scared nor brave. But I am both alone and accompanied.  
The shadow once again screams. It’s not something I can hear literally; still, I hear it deep inside my head.  
Is it a scream from a shadow I’m fantasizing in my nightmare? Or is it a scream from my real life that is reflecting to my nightmare?  
I hurriedly wake up. It’s already night. Raining.  
The scream’s not gone. It is more real than real. And I know whose scream it is: Noah.  
I jump from the bed to find where he’s screaming. It’s the living room where he is. There’s a hooded man trying to choke him. I see his knife on his hand and it seems like he has taken it from Noah. I believe this because if he had the knife in the first place, I don’t think Noah would be alive now. “Stop it!” I yell at him. “Stop it you motherfu-”  
He turns his head to me. “You,” he says with a deep, disturbing voice. “You are not the prophecy.”  
“Prophecy my ass,” I shout and throw at him the first thing I grab. Luckily, it’s a statuette of Statue of Liberty. Its torch, which is the sharpest part of it, cuts his shoulder slightly.  
He lets Noah go and starts to run.  
I ran to Noah and ask him if he’s okay. “Who the hell is he?” he shouts in pain. “Run the fuck after him!”  
I get up and find myself out of the house to hunt the hooded-man down.


	7. Rick: Darkened Consciousness

Rain is relaxing. I am delighted. I don’t fear it but feel like it fears some people. It is a beautiful night, indeed. I haven’t found any clues about the murder of Jeremy Huffles and it’s killing me softly. The cigarette on my mouth is burning and its smoke is filling the air that I’ve fed up with breathing.  
Oh, the murder. How come I couldn’t find any more details in the crime scene? Why did he leave the bullet hive consciously? Why did he circle it? What is it that he’s trying to say? I don’t know the answers to that. All I know is that he’s mocking with us. Maybe only with me.  
The only thing I love about my balcony is that it never ever catches rain. I sometimes see the cats soaking wet and take them to balcony so that they can dry themselves until the rain stops. I like cats, they’re cute and innocent.  
When I am done smoking my cigarette, I throw its butt away and watch the small light slowly faint. I get inside to get warm. Warmth isn’t something I feel often. Anything used to give me it but not since my wife and son’s passing. I miss them and sometimes wonder if they miss me, too.  
I hear the songs playing out loud in the cars from far. I hate them. They break my focus.  
I find a bottle of Daniel’s. My thirst shows up and I decide to drink some. Its warmth gives pleasure to my mouth and throat and chest and stomach. Other than those, my head gets dizzy after the sixth glass. I don’t drink often but these days push me to do so.  
I feel guilt. Maybe I am guilty. And whiskey takes away that feeling, doesn’t matter if I am guilty or not. What matters is that there is a killer on the loose. And I must lock him up before he kills someone else.  
Enough with the self-pitying.  
After I’ve fallen asleep on the sofa, a call from the station wakes me up. It’s Mona. “Good news?” I ask.  
“That Jeremy’s friend’s, Andrew,” she says.  
“What about him?”  
“I’s not about him.” she continues. “It’s his friend. Aaron.”  
“Tell me more.”  
“His roommate Noah was attacked by a hooded-man.”  
“Where?”  
“In their home.”  
He dared enter their home when they were in. This hooded figure must be bold, bolder than we, I, ever assumed.  
“Where are they now?”  
“Noah is in the station, testifying. Aaron is missing. Noah says he ran after him.”  
“What?” I yell. “Is he a moron?”  
I put my clothes on, check my cigarettes if they’re in my pocket. Then I leave the building to hunt the hooded-man and Aaron.  
This son of a bitch has been getting on my nerves for a while. It’s time to find out who he is, for silhouettes have nowhere to hide when there’s light.  
My car isn’t that far. I get in, close the door, run the engine. I open the window, put a cigarette between my lips, light it. I breathe in. Breathe the smoke out. Relaxed? I am not. Angry? I am.

It doesn’t take me long to find to find Aaron chase a man. The man has nowhere to run, I can see. The buildings are tall. There are no narrow streets. Aaron doesn’t seem to know what to do with him if he ever catches him.  
Hooded-man stops running. Aaron doesn’t. I stop the car. The man turns his head to me. “You’re here!” he screams. “This couldn’t get funnier!”  
I know this voice.  
I just can’t figure out whose.  
There’s a gun on his hand. A gun he just points at Aaron. Aaron stops. His hair is all wet because of the rain. He merely stops. “Don’t.” he says. “Killing doesn’t do you any good!”  
“Who says I kill for the good?  
“Then why do you kill?” I yell at him after I get out of the car.  
“Why?” he shouts and laughs. “The prophet wants me to!”  
“What prophet?” we both ask.  
“You both know him.” he replies. “Dementis...” he chuckles. “Funny last name. Andrew Dementis!”  
The last person I saw chuckling to Andrew’s last name was... “Oh, God.” I say, my voice cracks. “It can’t be you.”  
“It won’t be me,” the hooded-man answers.  
He pulls the trigger. Aaron gets shot from his shoulder. If shot a few inches lower, he would be as dead as a doornail. But he is shot perfectly. He isn’t going to die.  
I wonder if I can say the same when he shoots me.  
“There are issues between us, Harden,” he walks at me. “I know what happened to your family.”  
“Don’t you dare mention them!” I walk at him.  
“You always claimed it was murder and not just a car crash.”  
“I don’t claim if I don’t know it for sure.”  
“You know, your son and my prophet were friends.”  
“Alec and Andrew were friends?” I ask. “I...” I didn’t know this until he said so.  
“Andrew never lets anyone calls him by ‘Andy’ because your dead son called him that way. He simply misses him!”  
I remember my nightmare. Alec told me to “find Andy”. Oh, God... It all makes sense.  
“Killing Jeremy wasn’t the first, you idiot.” he stops walking. We’re nose to nose. There’s a balaclava covering his face. Still, I do know who he is.  
“I can kill you right now and no one would be sorry.”  
“You would.” he replies. “You seek for the truth.”  
I do.  
“Tell me.”  
“Andrew wrote about a car crash. And I was the security of his faculty. He dropped the paper he wrote it. It was folded a hundred times! I knew he hadn’t even bother to read it. But I read it. It was marvellous. I knew this kid had visions from the God himself. He told him to write those. And I was chosen by him to make them real.”  
“You killed my family.”  
“No,” he said. “Andrew did.”  
“You sick bastard.” I reach to my gun. Before I even did, I hear the gunshot. I feel the pain on my chest. I see my eyes getting numb. I feel my consciousness getting darkened. I feel the hole in my heart. I feel it stop beating.  
Then I see nothing.  
I feel nothing.


	8. Andrew: Deaf Ears and Blind Eyes

I hear a gunshot. After a few minutes, I hear another. The last time I heard one and my friend’s dying on the floor I’m standing at this very moment occurs to me. It hasn’t been long. A few days ago, we were together. Now one of us is gone and the other seeks for ceasing to exist.  
There are sirens. I wish I was deaf, so I couldn’t hear them. But they’re not police sirens. They’re an ambulance’s. I once again wonder who shot whom.  
I’m sick of waiting for people to do my shit.  
I decide to take down the that motherfucker.  
The rain hasn’t stopped yet I follow the ambulances. They’re not far. I’m scared and excited. I’m going to end this madness, even though I’ll have to kill whoever the fuck he is.

I’m at the crime scene. They’re two bodies one of whom is in a body bag. The other is just sitting with his shoulder and chest bandaged. I realise it’s Aaron. I run to him. “Are you okay? What happened?” I ask anxiously.  
“I am.”  
A policewoman comes. “I’m Mona.” she says. “I’m sorry, Aaron.”  
“Is it Noah?” he asks, heartbroken.  
Mona repeats himself. “I’m so sorry.”  
“Noah’s in the body bag?” I ask.  
“He was found dead in his flat.”  
“Then who’s in there?”  
A familiar voice approaches: “Rick Harden.” The voice belongs to Lewis. With his arrival, Mona walks away.  
Aaron looks at him like he knows him, but he wasn’t there when the police came to my apartment.  
“Unlike you, Rick was shot to kill.” Lewis continues. “I wonder how he managed to kill Rick and not you.”  
Aaron stands up. “I know you.” he says angrily. “I know your voice.”  
“Oh,” Lewis replies. “I’m busted.”  
“What’s going on?” I ask.  
“He did it all.” Aaron answers.  
I look at Lewis. He looks... psychotic.  
“There are five cops and six healers here and now.” Lewis says. “You two and me makes us fourteen people.”  
“And?”  
“My gun has eleven bullets in it.” All of a sudden, he starts to shoot people. I see Mona fall die as all the cops. And I see healers bleed to death with holes in their heads, which sadly reminds me of Jeremy. “And now there are only us three.”  
“Why are you doing this?” I cry.  
“God shows you what to do, making you the prophet.” Lewis replies. “I only do what needs to be done.”  
“You’re sick!”  
“No, you are.” he says. “I’m just a silhouette.”


	9. Aaron: Hardest Part of This

It wasn’t nice to see everyone around you die. I heard Lewis confess to Rick before he killed him. Lewis... Can you imagine? A deputy... Someone who worked with the police was the reason to this madness. Him having a police qualification already made him dangerous to us all. But there was something else that made him more dangerous: His disbelief of what he was doing was right.  
But he had to be stopped.  
And the hardest part of this was letting me try.

“You’re going to write a new prophecy,” Lewis insists. “And you’re going to give it to me so I can keep cleansing the earth!”  
“I don’t know how it works,” Andrew denies. “And I wouldn’t give it to you even if I did!”  
“Oh, you humans,” he continues. “You believe whatever you’re told!”  
I ask him what he means.  
“There weren’t six healers. I told you there were but there weren’t.” he explains. “There were five and there were still eleven bullets in my gun.” He looks at us both. “Do you know what that means.” We object to reply. “Do you know what that means!”  
“There are still one more bullet in the gun.”  
“And I know where it will be stuck if you don’t do what I tell you to.”  
“Where?” Andrew asks.  
“In my head.” I answer.  
Dear readers, this is where the hardest part of this starts to approach.  
“I will give you a prophecy.” Andrew says. “The last prophecy I ever wrote.”  
“Give!” he shouts. “I. Want. It.”  
I look at Andrew. Oh, fuck it. “Andy there’s something I need to tell you.”  
“Telling it might be a good time,” he says.  
“I read the one you mentioned.” I confess. “The last sentence.”  
He seems to remember it. “My madness is endless. But I am not.” he quotes. I whisper two words to his ear. Only two. And we’re the only ones to know them.  
“There’s something I need to tell you, too.” he says. “I really like your perfume. You smell nice.”  
“Hello?” Lewis interrupts. “I’m still here?”  
Andrew focuses on me. “I’m going to die.” he says to me but he means to say to Lewis.  
“Wait, what?” Lewis interferes again. “You’re going to what?”  
“Die.” Andrew answers. “The last prophecy includes my death.”  
“And you expect me you make this happen? Your death not only affects you. It affects God, his work. It affects me and my work, as well!” he shouts. “You will write a new one!”  
“That’s the problem... I haven’t had a single graphomania attack since I wrote my own death.”  
Lewis stays silent for a minute. “Well then,” he says. “So be it. I’ll kill him anyway.” He points his gun on my head. “What are you going to do now that you know I’m not bat at shooting people. I’m like, you know, a dead-shot.”  
“You kill him, you don’t have the prophecy.”  
“If I don’t kill him, the prophecy you give me doesn’t mean anything anyway!” he screams. “Why would killing only the prophet do me any good?”  
“Only me?” Andrew asks. “I didn’t say that.” Lewis starts to listen. “I said it includes my death. Didn’t say it is my death.”  
“Then give it to me.”  
“No, Andrew,” I say. “It’s suicide.”  
“He already wishes he was dead, so why bother?”  
“If it will end this all,” Andrew continues. “Me dying isn’t a problem.”  
“It is to me!” I shout. “Your death not only affects you,” I quote Lewis. “It affects us, your friends.”  
“All my friends are dead now.”  
“Not me.”  
“Sure about that?” Lewis interrupts and pulls the trigger.


	10. Andrew: The End of All Things

I was shot.  
“Did you think I was dumb enough to realise you’re lying?” Lewis keeps talking. “I read that shit, too. I read the whole fucking thing.”  
“W...” I stutter. “When?”  
“Don’t you remember the night dearest of all your friends died?” he starts to explain. “You said to the police, I know because I was there, you fainted a couple of times.”  
“What does it have to do with all this?” Aaron asks.  
“Listen to me when I’m talking, right?” he’s angry. He turns to Andrew. “Rick asked you ‘You wouldn’t happen to be sleeping when someone was climbing to you apartment, would you?’, remember that?”  
I nod.  
“It was true.” he confessed. “It. Was. Me. You were asleep with your latest prophecy on wide open on your lap.”  
“Y-you knew the whole time?”  
“Of course I did, you moron!”  
“You kept killing anyway.” Aaron interrupts.  
“I guess I liked it. And I kind of wanted to fix what I couldn’t do properly two years ago.”  
“What’s that?” Aaron asks.  
“The car crash.”  
“You killed Alec!” I scream as louder I could.  
“Had you ever seen his father, Andy?” he’s irritating. “What was Alec’s surname?”  
“H-harden.”  
“And what was the officer’s I killed tonight.”  
“There’s a bunch of them, really.” Aaron says sarcastically.  
“Don’t you get sarcastic with me, son.”  
“R-rick,” I stutter. “Rick Harden.”  
Oh my God. Rick was my closest friend’s father. And they were both dead now. How could I never see him? I hate myself. I do. And I hate him for making me hate myself.  
I can’t say anything more. I slowly lie down. Breathing gets harder, air gets heavier.  
Aaron told me only two words.  
My death.  
I can feel it, now.  
Lewis keeps talking. “I guess my job here is done.” he takes his second gun. “And so is yours.”  
I hear a gunshot while my eyes are slowly closing.  
A gunshot.  
That’s how everything started.  
A gunshot and Jeremy was dead.  
A gunshot and Rick was dead.  
A gunshot and Noah was dead.  
A gunshot and I was dead.  
A gunshot and I cannot see the body lying beside me.  
But I am sure it doesn’t smell like Aaron’s perfume.


End file.
